Mind/matter duality

[little_monkey]

I believe what you have left out what is the most important element, Darwin's theory of evolution: the fact that we've evolved from lower species. Evolution has no specific goal other than for a species to survive not only against the natural elements but also against other species. In that struggle, nothing was ever written in cement that we, homo sapiens, would have the brains completely wired to understand every aspects of the universe. But as the dominant species on this planet, we have accomplished quite an extraordinary feat in understanding a good part of this universe with two simple tools: the alphabet and a number system. Just 100 years ago we began to understand why atoms bond to form molecules. Just 50 years ago, we've discovered DNA, the basic stuff of life. I don't think our journey has ended, rather it has just begun. The reality that we can even understand the nature of our limitations, through math (Godel Incomplete Theorem) and physics (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), is extraordinary in itself.


Joe

No doubt. My belief is that as we push against new boundaries, we're going to come up against more and more ambiguities that seem unsolvable. We may solve some of them through cycles of experimentation and theoretical physics, but we'll also realize that others are necessarily unsolveable.

I also believe (and this is speculative) that many of the apparent ambiguities will get fought over, and eventually shrugged off as brute fact, like particle/wave. I highly suspect in the end that matter and mind may end up being indistinguishable-- not because mind is just a byproduct of matter or vice versa, but because they may end up being different manifestations (or perspectives) of the same thing: mind/matter/energy/stuff.

/woo

Agree on that.

One note tho', about the wave/particle thingy. In our everyday life, we have classical physics that gives more or less a reasonable picture of the universe. In that regime objects are classified as either particles ( things that collide and bounce off) and waves ( things that go straight through and interfere destructively/constructively) But at subatomic scale, that classification no longer holds. We have objects that can be like particles in some circumstances, and waves in different circumtances. But somehow we have developped a theory that can handle these. So what we couldn't describe through ordinary language, we have done it through the other "language", called math. So what about the other outstanding issues like free will or self-awareness? Who knows, but 100 years ago, there were no theory about the beginning of the universe. Now we have a half-dozen of them. I believe we live in very exciting times.

[Sal]

The whole particle/wave duality might be down to out anthropocentric view of reality, maybe the same as mind/brain duality. What if, at the sub-atomic level, what we perceive as being particle/wave duality is merely an "expression" of how the state of affairs intrinsically is? It would make sense, in that we on a day to day level experience waves and particles as discreet sizes in our Newtonian middle-world view; but where these boundaries becomes blurred out and become something completely different at the sub-atomic.

The sum is truly different from its parts.

[Zarith]

The whole particle/wave duality might be down to out anthropocentric view of reality, maybe the same as mind/brain duality. What if, at the sub-atomic level, what we perceive as being particle/wave duality is merely an "expression" of how the state of affairs intrinsically is? It would make sense, in that we on a day to day level experience waves and particles as discreet sizes in our Newtonian middle-world view; but where these boundaries becomes blurred out and become something completely different at the sub-atomic.

The sum is truly different from its parts.

At least the way I understand it (and I'm no expert), that's precisely the case. Things can exhibit wave-like behavior or particle-like behavior or some mixture of the two even, but in either case the rules for calculating event probabilities using complex probability amplitudes are the same. The computational framework asserts neither wave nor particle, but something else entirely. It seems alien because it's absent from our everyday macro experience, and yet it describes the observed phenomena quite accurately.

[little_monkey]

At least the way I understand it (and I'm no expert), that's precisely the case. Things can exhibit wave-like behavior or particle-like behavior or some mixture of the two even, but in either case the rules for calculating event probabilities using complex probability amplitudes are the same. The computational framework asserts neither wave nor particle, but something else entirely. It seems alien because it's absent from our everyday macro experience, and yet it describes the observed phenomena quite accurately.

Quantum logic is slightly different than classical logic, but the difference amounts to a whole lot. Just as an illustration, the probability of rolling a 2 or a 5 from a die, would be P =1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3. Here I've just added the probabilities. But in QM, you would need to add amplitude and then square to get the probability. P = [ψ(2) +ψ(5)]^2 = ψ(2)ψ(2) + ψ(2)ψ(5) + ψ(5)ψ(2) + ψ(5)ψ(5). You get a whole bunch of terms that describe interference, which you don't get in classical physics. The real mystery of QM is why this works, and not some other scheme.

[TheBigOhMan]

At least the way I understand it (and I'm no expert), that's precisely the case. Things can exhibit wave-like behavior or particle-like behavior or some mixture of the two even, but in either case the rules for calculating event probabilities using complex probability amplitudes are the same. The computational framework asserts neither wave nor particle, but something else entirely. It seems alien because it's absent from our everyday macro experience, and yet it describes the observed phenomena quite accurately.

Quantum logic is slightly different than classical logic, but the difference amounts to a whole lot. Just as an illustration, the probability of rolling a 2 or a 5 from a die, would be P =1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3. Here I've just added the probabilities. But in QM, you would need to add amplitude and then square to get the probability. P = [ψ(2) +ψ(5)]^2 = ψ(2)ψ(2) + ψ(2)ψ(5) + ψ(5)ψ(2) + ψ(5)ψ(5). You get a whole bunch of terms that describe interference, which you don't get in classical physics. The real mystery of QM is why this works, and not some other scheme.

Hello Lil Monkey.

I'm a bit curious about you posing Quantum Mechanics "working" with a diferent set of logic slightly diferent to the classical one ( I once read a paper where they suggested it could work with paraconsistent logic, in order to allow for contradictions ).

¿Are you sure Quantum Mechanics really requires a new set of logical rules? I've heard there are at least 13 Interpretations to the Quantum Mechanical behaviour ( and for the moment all are valid in a sense ) and some work with "hidden variables" like De-Broglie Interpretation, that somehow can fool Bells Inequalities by accepting non-locality while conserving a form of determinism.
Maybe Quantum Mechanics is not that strange after all.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, it can't be so strange as to defy everything we know -since we're capable of working it out via probability.

[bennyboy]

Okay you guys go get a room. . . or at least another thread.

To keep kind of OP, I'd like to say this: it seems like the "objective" world view is breaking apart, because things at the scale of the very small don't operate as we expect objects to. Physics has solved this by going away from simple algebraic equations to statistical models-- that's fine. But what does it mean when our shared reality is probabilistic? To me it means the universe is better described as idealistic than as an objective reality.

It's back to the chicken and the egg: we normally think of math as representative of the salient features of our physical reality. But why couldn't you equally say that the apparent (i.e. macro) reality is really an expression of math, i.e. that the universe is "really" an interaction of concepts rather than things?

[TheBigOhMan]

Okay you guys go get a room. . . or at least another thread.

To keep kind of OP, I'd like to say this: it seems like the "objective" world view is breaking apart, because things at the scale of the very small don't operate as we expect objects to. Physics has solved this by going away from simple algebraic equations to statistical models-- that's fine. But what does it mean when our shared reality is probabilistic? To me it means the universe is better described as idealistic than as an objective reality.

It's back to the chicken and the egg: we normally think of math as representative of the salient features of our physical reality. But why couldn't you equally say that the apparent (i.e. macro) reality is really an expression of math, i.e. that the universe is "really" an interaction of concepts rather than things?

I'm not sure I'm following you. ¿Are you suggesting a kind of Russelian Protopanphysicalism ? Please elaborate .

[bennyboy]

. . .Protopanphysicalism. . .

tl;dr

I know what all the parts of that word mean, but I do not know what the word means. It almost seems a propos to the subject in a strange way. By panphysicalism, I take it you are referring to a physical monism-- everything is physical. But I don't know how to apply "proto-" to that concept.

If pressed to define myself, I'd say I'm an ambiguist. I think things can often be interpreted through opposing viewpoints, with nothing to decide with view is correct. I'd argue that the universe is completely idealistic as well as completely objective, and that the only resolution to paradox (or ambiguity) is a change in perspective.

For example, which is "correct": light as a particle, or light as a wave? Obviously, anyone choosing just one answer is a bit dense. Instead, you have to accept the (pretty woo) reality: that a photon is both particle and wave, and also neither. I believe that mind and matter are much the same: the dualism between subject and object gets inverted and turned around, until you can't really tell which is which.

*coughs and passes joint to next guy in circle*

[TheBigOhMan]

tl;dr

I know what all the parts of that word mean, but I do not know what the word means. It almost seems a propos to the subject in a strange way. By panphysicalism, I take it you are referring to a physical monism-- everything is physical. But I don't know how to apply "proto-" to that concept.

Woops, sorry, my mystake, it was "Russelian Panphysicalism". I read it from one of Chalmers paper ( http://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf ).
Chalmers describes "Russelian panphysicalism" in the following way:

Another important variety of panpsychism is Russellian panpsychism. This view takes its name from Russell’s insight, in The Analysis of Matter and other works, that physics reveals the relational structure of matter but not its intrinsic nature. According to this view, classical physics tells us a lot about what mass does—it resists acceleration, attracts other masses, and so on—but it tells us nothing about what mass intrinsically is. We might say that physics tells us what the mass role is, but it does not tell us what property plays this role. Here we can say that quiddities are the fundamental properties that play
the fundamental roles specified in physics. Alternatively, we can say that quiddities are the categorical bases of the microphysical dispositions characterized in physics. We can stipulate that quiddities are distinct from the roles or the dispositions themselves. A view on which there are only role or dispositional properties, and no distinct properties playing those roles or serving as the basis for the dispositions, is a view on which there are no quiddities..

It's in a sense the view that reality is trully phenomenological ( or "concepts" ) but we just see things like mass, spin, color charge in turn.

If pressed to define myself, I'd say I'm an ambiguist. I think things can often be interpreted through opposing viewpoints, with nothing to decide with view is correct. I'd argue that the universe is completely idealistic as well as completely objective, and that the only resolution to paradox (or ambiguity) is a change in perspective.

Well, thats indeed strange .

For example, which is "correct": light as a particle, or light as a wave? Obviously, anyone choosing just one answer is a bit dense. Instead, you have to accept the (pretty woo) reality: that a photon is both particle and wave, and also neither. I believe that mind and matter are much the same: the dualism between subject and object gets inverted and turned around, until you can't really tell which is which.

*coughs and passes joint to next guy in circle*

My mind prefers the "wave-only" approach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%...-only_view) on this one . But indeed, Quantum Mechanics pose counter-intuitive views.